


For Destruction.

by Gospelofthewicked



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, But also a lot of therapy, Gen, Identity Issues, Internalised Racism, Loki Needs a Hug, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 13:13:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14057712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gospelofthewicked/pseuds/Gospelofthewicked
Summary: Loki thinks. Something cracks.





	For Destruction.

King Loki waits until the palace library is all but empty before entering. King Loki. He doesn't like the title as much as he thought he would, it's too heavy on his weak shoulders, especially.... after knowing what he is. That's why he's here, isn't it? To remind himself. To make sure that he will never, ever forget.

 

(Because everyone else did, no-one ever bothered to tell you, not important not important oh do shut up!)

 

Swishing regally past the palace guards, he nods at them and tells them he's getting a book for his father (oh, that's another name that's out of place) for when he awakens. The lie is unnecessary, but all he has are lies, and it makes him feel better about the fact that no-one would have spoken to him otherwise.

 

A new question crawls into his head as he searches. Do the guards know? Had they been told? Or have they just guessed? Did they see the many signs that Loki, for all his self-proclaimed observance, saw only as detached reasons why he wasn't quite good enough? No, this wasn't what he was here for. Another day, perhaps.

 

Dancing between shelves, he permitted himself a small sigh of satisfaction when he caught sight of his prey. Here they were, all the books ever written on his disgusting race. Only a scant few claimed to be actual scientific inquiries, most were children's stories with gruesome illustrations.

 

He doesn't dare take the scientific ones, he might find his name. Laufey. King. Father. No, no. Loki isn't ready. He wants to understand, he wants to scream.

 

(Why did you abandon me too?)

 

He carefully seals up the thought and buries it somewhere that he hopefully won't be able to find his way back to for a while. Loki will deal with it soon, he promises himself that, but he must focus. There is something good that will come out of this. There has to be. Otherwise there's nothing, there's nothing but himself. He never admits it, but sometimes Loki hates how alone he is.

 

_The last time he'd been here was with Thor, a long time ago. For some reason, no matter how much Thor whined or Loki bargained, Odin never told these stories. When they eventually considered him a lost cause, they ran to their mother. She would do everything under the stars for her boys, and this was something they knew and often abused. However, when she was asked, her voice changed into something strange and she made them promise not to bother with such things._

 

_And they stopped for a while, because they loved their mother, but all children break their promises eventually. Hearing the other children chatter and play games about the bloody stories their parents would whisper to them at night, the old hunger returned._

 

“ _We could just get the books ourselves.” Loki had said, after being left out of another game of kill-the-frost-giant. They only let him join in if he agreed to be the frost giant that got chased, but after one game got particularly violent and he left with more bruises than fun, he decided to maintain a safe distance._

 

“ _Why didn't you suggest that earlier?” Thor grumbled, who was always allowed to be the lead hunter. Loki always had to admit, he did look the part._

 

“ _It was funny watching you run around like a common idiot.”_

 

_So, they had begun sneaking into the library at night, a mighty task as the place had seemed so huge to them at the time. Their quest was rewarded as, for once, Thor read books as enthusiastically as Loki did. Loki also found them enjoyable, even if the stories seemed to get a bit repetitive._

 

(How dare they. How dare they keep those books there for him to read while wiping their hands of all wrong-doing.)

 

Years have withered, and here he is again. He grabs a stack of books, casts a weak distraction spell around himself, and begins. As he runs his hand across the pages, each terrible word burrows into his flesh. They wriggle around within him, trying to pull his true skin to their surface. Disfigured, grinning face stare up at him as blood floods from their bashed-in skulls, claiming him as their own. They'd never done this to before, never made him want to tear himself apart before he could vomit up his insides. He'd never really hated the Jotuns, not like the rest of his peers, just thought of them as residents of a distant planet of ice and snow. Tricking them into meeting the destroyer, and seeing their still corpses afterwards, had left a strange feeling in his stomach. He hadn't really wanted them to die.

 

They had just been themselves, though, they hadn't had every swollen drop of poisoned honey forced down their throats from birth, they hadn't wandered a golden city made more beautiful by it's distance. Never close enough. They couldn't be blamed, just as you couldn't hold avalanches and blizzards morally accountable..

 

(Where are you going with this?)

 

(I want to die.)

 

Loki had been given a chance. He'd been raised on Asgard, gently taught the wrongs of his people, made the prince of a wonderful world. Close to Thor, the shining son, an example to all the realms of who he should be.

 

And yet. And yet he'd still played tricks, told lies, hid from feasts, laughed too little, everything, everything, everything. He'd even sabotaged his brother's coronation for his own selfish gain. His blood was pulling the strings, turning him against Asgard. Loki can't accept his heritage, he knows too much to pretend that they (we) are anything other than monsters. He is destruction, how can he break himself to fit into a world that built everything?

 

Loki sits for a while, and thinks. The moon is white and round above him, an apathetic eye shedding light onto his strangeness through the great window. He stares out at Asgard's gardens, its towns.

 

“I'm sorry.” he murmurs, bowing his head, pale fingers gripping the cold glass, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

 

If only Odin had never found him. If only he had never been born. If only that race of monsters had been wiped off the face of their hideous planet before... before. He realises how tired he is. Loki hasn't slept since Thor was banished, and it is beginning to show in the ache that builds up behind his eyes. Still, he cannot bring himself to move, cannot bring himself to sleep in the bedroom that shouldn't be his, and so he stays. Still thinking.

 

Somewhere in the weary labyrinth of his swelling self-loathing, his mind loops back to the face of his mother as she pressed her lips together and shook her head. Then, he remembers the stories she did tell (still does, when he's certain no-one else is there to overhear), ones that managed to entertain both him and Thor from beginning to end. Odin tells them they are not gods, that's just what the Midgardians call them, but Loki knows that it can't be true because his mother is a goddess. One story, his favourite because it involved a lot of magic, was about a witch and some gold. He strains to remember.

 

( _Three times the Aesir burned Gullveig's body, and three times she lived again)_

 

It was always at this point that Thor, who found the story insufferable, suggested that he set Loki on fire three times to test if he knew magic. Loki's response would be to smother him with a pillow, while Thor tried to kick his ribcage into pieces in his struggle for freedom. Mother always laughed and smiled patiently with her arms resting on her lap as she waited for them to tire of their bickering. Loki, eager to hear the rest, would stop first, shortly followed by Thor who realised that the faster it started again, the sooner it would end.

 

( _Then, wherever she went, and she went everywhere, into every hall, Gullveig was given another name. The awed Aesir and their servants called her Heid, the gleaming one.)_

 

His mother always says that stories are lies that hide truths. Something like madness is thrumming through him, and he begins to wonder what this one has to tell him. Gullveig was an outsider, obsessed with nothing but herself, evil and rotten. Yet, after proving her worth to Asgard, she was finally accepted, and did no harm to anyone after that.

 

Loki idly digs his nails into his palm, a plan blossoming. If he cannot cripple what he is, he should use it for good. If he is destruction, he should hurl himself screaming at the enemies of Asgard. He will never be free of the wrongness beneath his skin, but he can ensure that the sickness will die with him. What better act of redemption than erasing the evil that created him in the first place?

 

Alone in the dark, Loki smiles.

 

Now, what was it Heimdall said about leaving the Bifrost open again?

 


End file.
